public sector unions

[Richard Gibson]

The NEA has built, from time to time and place to place, terrific
relationships with parents, community groups, and other unions. However,
with the rise of "new unionism" (which also seeks to mimic the corporate
world in its desire for mergers) under the leadership of Bob Chase and
Dennis Van Roekel, the partners NEA now seeks are with the corporate world,
politicians, and the top of what poses as the labor movement. 

Teachers are now centripetally positioned to fight for equality and
democracy in this society. They still, in nea anyway, retain some
semblances of democracy in their union. Whether or not they use that form
to go out and organize in their own, and their kids, interests is an open
possibility. 

At 10:40 AM 7/14/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Mike Yates wrote:
>
>>Second, the public unions might be able to build coalitions with the
>>public more easily than private sector unions since their members often
>>provide essential public services.
>
>How I wish this were true, but have there been any examples of it actually
>happening? The NYC municipal unions have done nothing of the sort; they
>haven't even peeped as successive administrations have hacked at public
>services for the last 23 years. (Of course, with about half the locals in
>the main municipal union, DC 37, under grand jury investigation, they're
>hardly in a position to raise much of a stink. Not even DC 37's endorsement
>of Giuliani can stop the march of the law!) And Mark Maier, in his book
>City Unions, argues that this has been the case since NYC first recognized
>its unions 40 years ago. Any other jurisdictions have anything better to
>report?
>
>Doug
>
>
>
>
Rich Gibson
Director of International Social Studies
Wayne State University
College of Education
Detroit MI 48202

http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/index.html
http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/meap.html

	Life travels upward in spirals. 

	Those who take pains to search the shadows

	 of the past below us, then, can better judge the

	 tiny arc up which they climb, 

	more surely guess the dim

	 curves of the future above them.